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Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Follow the Money

Money talks and bulls*** walks - Larry Stoner.

I have been racking my brain trying to
remember the origin of the phrase, “Follow the Money”. Finally,
I succumbed and looked it up on the ubiquitous Google. Very
fittingly, in view of the real topic of this post, the quote is from
the film All the President's Men – a doc-u-drama about
Watergate. And the moral of the Watergate saga? When a President
starts telling lies then he's in real trouble.

So, the Sunday Times this week has an
article,Healthcare “lie” leaves Obama under siege, which
says quite precisely that the President has lied and he's in real
trouble!

President Obama - either through
carelessness, malice, incompetence or downright deceit has been
forced to backtrack quickly on the Affordable Care Act (Obama-Care).

Instead of a spirited defence of his
policy the President admitted he had “fumbled the ball” by
unveiling a healthcare reform website beset with technical glitches.

“Yet he failed to address a more
fundamental problem: millions of people had been told their existing
health plans were being cancelled – despite having been promised 29
times during the battle to introduce the Affordable Care Act that
''if you like your insurance plan you can keep it''. - Sunday Times.

55% of Americans believe that he
flat-out lied. Evidence that White House officials knew that
millions of self-employed people would lose their existing plans, but
hid this fact so that “Obamacare” could pass.

Given a chance before the media to
“man-up” and admit the untruths the President resorted to a
tangle of legalese instead. He ain't fooling anyone really. Hiding
behind an inept administration is not going to placate those who
don't like Obamacare at all and are now as happy as pigs in poop!

Without having to do anything, the
President has handed them a bonus – an own goal of monumental
proportions.

Under real pressure from Democrats who
face mid-term elections next year, the President caved in. He
announced that health insurers could extend by a year policies due to
be cancelled because they did not comply with the new law.

Golly, thanks Mr President!

Just weeks after the Republican's were
taking most of the flak for the government shut-down Obama throws
them a life-line.

The Sunday Times thinks, “Obama's
biggest challenge is that as problems mount there will be a clamour
to modify the law in Congress. If they open this up for any
congressional revision whatsoever, it'll be pretty much gutted.
There is a good chance of it being overturned now.”

A respected polling organization
believes given that Obama has more or less admitted lying getting
back the trust of the people is going to be extraordinarily difficult
– if not impossible.

“Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic
strategist, said he believed Republicans were afraid of Obamacare
being successfully implemented because it would then become part of
the fabric of the state, like the 1960's welfare programs Medicare
and Medicaid, for the elderly and poor respectively.” - Sunday
Times.

Another commentator said that he did
not believe that the President had lied but that he had been
“blissfully ignorant of the truth because it suited his political
purpose.”

If that's the most charitable
explanation then it really is pretty lame indeed.

So, where does this leave us and where
do we go from here?

Back to the top, I'm afraid, “Follow
the Money”.

Ask yourself – why were millions of
people being told that their existing health plans were being
cancelled?

Research required. I tried. I really
tried. I managed to get to the .gov website which has simply oodles
and oodles of information. So many oodles that it gave me a
headache. I tried to research with Google searches outside the .gov
network. Not entirely successful.

Forbes Thought Of The Day

“ Every time we have an election, we get in worse men and the
country keeps right on going. Times have proven only one thing and
that is you can’t ruin this country even with politics. ”— Will Rogers

Aside from the brilliant Will Rogers
quotation the best explanation which ordinary folk might be able to
understand is in the Forbes article above.

I especially like this bit I have
extracted from the Forbes article:

“Of course, let us not forget that
candidate Obama campaigned for years promising that Obamacare would
reduce the cost of family health insurance by an average of $2,500 a
year. But instead of going down, the cost of health insurance has
shot up. More Calculated Deception? How could anyone think that
mandating slews of additional benefits that health insurance would
have to provide, in addition to requiring insurers to issue new
coverage to everyone at standard rates no matter how sick and costly
when they first applied, would do anything but raise the cost of
health insurance sharply?”

Follow the Money! I repeat, Follow the
Money.

Even a little common sense should have
made the voters realise that extending quality healthcare to millions
of folks who previously didn't have it was going to cost big bucks.

(You can make a very good case for the
voters being very stupid, but politicians are not in the business of
pointing this out to their electors – for very good reasons.)

Nevertheless, that's the system.

How about, just for a change we follow
the cash. Data from the WHO (World Health Organisation) - BTW if you
think the WHO is a communist plot please stop reading now and go and
resume digging your bunker.

Interesting? If we exclude the
“minnows” whose large spending can be due to some very odd
factors, we have Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany,
Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland and the USA.

Is this some kind of exclusive club we
should all aspire to join?

I'm not so sure.

Looking at a countries health spending
as a proportion of all spending the USA (22.4%) is eclipsed by the
Solomon Islands (23.1%) and Samoa (23.4%). Colombia is on the list
at (20.1%) and Andorra comes is at a whopping 21.3%.

The USA spends 17.9 % of it's GDP on
healthcare – the UK spends 9.6%.

What can we learn from these raw
statistics – if anything?

Do you think the healthcare in the
Solomons is about as good as the US?

Do you think the healthcare in Samoa is
a bit better?

Do you think that Columbian healthcare
is actually quite good?

Are the Andorrans among the most
blessed folk on earth for healthcare?

Is the healthcare in the US twice as
good as the UK?

I've got a “no” on all of the
above. I may be wrong, but I'm from Missouri and you are going to
have to show me.

I get very annoyed with folks using
percentages to “prove a point”. Stop letting the stats blind you
and answer a simple question – 10% of not a lot = ?? (if you said
“not a lot” you are correct!)

You cannot use stats or mathematics to
realistically analyse the cost of healthcare.

Why? Because the cost of healthcare is
a bottomless pit. Putting it another way – the cost of healthcare
in any society is going to increase as people live longer, new drugs
and treatments become available (as drug companies try to recoup
their costs by charging massive amounts for drugs which may (for
example) provide an extra year of poor quality life for cancer
sufferers), more and more people expect more and more from the system
and the working (tax-paying) population decreases for simple
demographic reasons.

In the Eastern Daily Press we have a
senior Conservative politician saying much the same as I.

Anne Widdicombe is not a left-wing
loonie. She has impeccable conservative credentials (for a British
politician that is).

In the article, The NHS cannot do it
all warns ex-minister, her main point is, “The NHS is not going
to survive until the end of the century in the form that we know it.
We've got to be grown up and recognise that.”

She goes on, “I wish people would
stop thinking the NHS can deliver all it – it can't. It has never
been able to provide everything and never will. The NHS is limited.
It is limited in time and money. People have just got to accept that.
It is no good looking for perfection in everything.”

She goes on, “We can only do what we
have the resources to be able to do.

She pointed out (as I have already
pointed out) hospitals never used to provide cancer care services
like chemotherapy and radiotherapy as they do now. Every time they
deliver one thing, another demand is put upon them. The demands are
soaring towards infinity, so you will get pockets of extremely bad
practice.”

She says, politicians are “frightened”
of acting (Obama take note!!) because of the huge emotional
attachment between the public and the NHS. (US readers do not switch
off here – the kind of emotional attachment she is talking about is
exactly the same as the attachment folks have for their healthcare
plans – no matter how misguided. The President is rightly being
pilloried for trying to break that attachment.

From a safe distance, it looks like
human nature is at the root of Obama's problems. The folks who are
attached to their plans are the self-employed, I believe. The
Affordable Health Care Act sees some of these plans as not very good.
Why? Well if you are self-employed and cost is your raison d’etre
you are unlikely to have opted for a (perceived) expensive plan when
you have the choice of a cheaper one. Can't really blame them.

Unless your view is that it is just
irresponsible for some folks to effectively opt-out of Affordable
Care – knowing full well that if the stinky-stuff hits their fan
they will want someone else to pick up the pieces.

In the Western industrial societies,
healthcare may be too important to let individuals irresponsibly
opt-out. How we square the circle with individual freedom will tax
the brains of the best of us.